Tactical Assembly Area Ripper, Living Support Area 7-- Marines from Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines are debriefed following a night security mission in the Kuwait desert outside their base at LSA7 recently. (Andrew Cutraro/P-D)

LIVING SUPPORT AREA 7, KUWAIT - "Guard Officer, Guard Officer," the Marine sergeant whispers into the radio. "Lima 1, Lima 1 at Checkpoint 2."

It is 11:12 p.m. Saturday, and Marine First Squad, L Company is on night patrol from the U.S. military outpost closest to the Iraqi border. Heavily armed and dressed in full battle gear, each man maneuvers through the cold, desert night just 22 miles south of Iraq with night vision goggles strapped to his helmet and pulled down so that the eyepiece fits snugly against his left eye.

The six-inch goggles protruding from their heads and other exotic gear strapped to their bodies give them the look of bionic warriors as they scour the desert floor under a moonless, star-laden sky.

Tonight is part rehearsal and part real-time war exercise. The squad of 15 Marines at what is being called "the tip of the spear" of the U.S. military effort preparing for war is on the lookout for enemy infiltration. The squad has already been briefed on how to handle anybody they capture, the appropriate passwords and light signals to use when bringing them back to camp.

They also are practicing using the infrared light system that allows them to see deep into the darkness and working on exiting and entering their base camp without being shot by their own sentries.

This is just one bit of the accelerated pace at which Marines, the Army and Navy in Kuwait are preparing for war with Iraq. Here and in other U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and in the Middle East, forces are moving swiftly to prepare for battle.



Sharpening skills


On Sunday morning, Marine Lt. Col. Michael Belcher of Washington, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, takes a two-hour, dusty drive through seemingly endless desert to check the live-fire exercises of his weapons company.

Working even closer to the Iraqi border, a mere seven miles away, are 150-plus Marines under Capt. Dan Schmitts, whose parents live in south St. Louis County, as do most of his brothers and sisters. Schmitts' Marines are testing TOW rockets and heavy machine guns mounted on Hummer vehicles, mortars and other heavy weapons. They sharpen sniper skills and "zero" their weapons to make sure they shoot where they are aimed.

A Marine inspects equipment as he stands atop an Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) as hardware arrives at the Arrival and Assembly Operations Element in Kuwait recently. ANDREW CUTRARO/PD

Pow! Pow! Pow! Lance Cpls. Andres Gooding, 21, of San Jose, Calif., and Joseph Nicholas, 20, of Vancouver, Wash., fire their M249 squad automatic weapons, capable of 1,000 rounds per minute, at cardboard targets plastered against a large plywood board propped up in front of a sand dune. The tracer bullets rip through the board and briefly leave tiny bright red lights glittering in the sand. Both weapons, they tell their commanding officer, appear to be firing a little low.

On a sand dune about 100 yards away, Cpl. Tyson Manker, 21, of Jacksonville, Ill., and a line of other mortar gunners are rushing to get their weapons sighted accurately as another Marine shouts out instructions. The sergeant in charge of getting them prepared thinks they were too slow.

"Our job is to prepare for combat," he lectures. "We've got to get it down to the point that it's muscle memory. The call for mortars is not going to come when we're all just waiting for it. It's going to come like, 'Bam!' and we've got the be there."

Some Marines have found that even practice can be hazardous. Heavy-machine gunner Cpl. Ryan McFarland of Kansas City wears a bandage over the injury to his left eye, the result of a crash when he drove his Hummer and three-man gun crew over a huge sand dune during the previous night of night-vision-goggle exercises.

Back at the living support area, Lt. Doug French, 24, of Seattle, Wash., is taking his platoon through search-and-kill exercises.

"If the ground is soft, the AAVs (armed amphibious vehicles) won't be able to go in as close to the target," he says. "That means you'll have to run at least 2,000 meters to get into position."

Each of his four squads breaks out into individual units and practices responding to attack.

"Enemy left," a Marine shouts. The men, operating initially out of diamond formation, fan to their left, drop to the ground in a firing position and form a straight line. A group to the left pretends to lay down suppressing fire while the group to the right moves up.



Tricky operations




Belcher, who charged through the Kuwaiti oil fields to liberate Kuwait's airport during Desert Storm and who fought most recently in Somalia, said the difficulty in preparing for Iraq is getting the Marines ready for a variety of missions that they may encounter.

"We could be fighting a war or we could be running a humanitarian effort," he said. "It'll probably be a mixture of both. That's the challenge for the young Marines."

But he said the group of Marines at this encampment, almost exclusively from the Twenty-nine Palms base located in the desert of Southern California, are particularly suited for this battle. "These guys are prepared for this," he said. "They're climatized for it. They know how to use their vehicles in the terrain."

If the battle takes place in Baghdad, it could be a difficult one, he said.

"Urban operations are always tricky," he said, "just due to the congestion of an urban area."

One of the things that they train for, but are still worried about, is the use of nerve, biological and chemical agents.

"Yes," Belcher said, "one of our concerns is the use of chemical weapons, because it has a tremendous psychological impact. We train for it, but you just don't know how people will respond."